Golden Chow Mein Restaurant — Restaurant in Saint Paul

Tried the beef with peppers, chicken fried rice, and pork wontons tonight. It was understandably busy around dinner time, but there were multiple people waiting 30 to 40 minutes for their orders. It sounds like it's not an uncommon issue. The front of house was noticeably disorganized. I paid for my order but had to stand around an extra 15 minutes waiting for my receipt to print; it never did print, so I left my phone number in case payment didn't process.

So, the food... in general it was underwhelming to poor. The chicken fried rice was decent. The beef with peppers had not great flavor; tasted more like salty beef gravy than a spicy Szechuan type flavor. Granted it wasn't called Szechuan, but it was supposed to have at least some spice to it. The pork wontons were just sad, see picture. Barely warm from the long wait, they had less than a pinky tip bit of pork in each one. In a competitive West 7th food market, I won't repeat.

Edit: A follow up on this experience. My payment ended up not processing, so I went back to pay the next night. When asked about how my food was, I was pretty honest because I was hoping they'd be able to apply constructive criticism to improve their product. When talking about the awful pork wontons, the owner(?) said that's just the way they have to make them, so the wonton wrapper doesn't burn and so the pork cooks all the way through. I'm no master chef, but I'm sure there's a way to pre-cook the pork or assemble the wonton with more pork in it without burning the wrapper and while still cooking the meat through. No offer for concessions was made, which is fine, but all in all this was a...

Had our first, but not last visit last night. What a great Mom & Pop find! Our meal was so good that even our picky-eater son wanted to plan our next visit before we had even left. The menu was not as large as some Chinese restaurants but had the classics. We sampled the cream cheese wontons, chicken wings, shrimp egg foo young, shrimp almond ding (med heat), and chicken sweet n sour. All really, really delicious! Everything was served hot, made-to-order, homemade and extremely well-seasoned and prepared. They are famous for their Chicken Wings. We got some and they were truly delicious. The meat was infused with a wonderful ginger-garlic marinade. They were fried in a very light, crispy batter. The shrimp was also firm, flavorful and perfectly cooked in both dishes we had. The egg foo young came with three very large patties. It was hand made at order and chock full of veggies and meat/shrimp held together in a delicate egg cake. The accompanying gravy was not too heavy with a subtle, just-right seasoning. The hand battered chicken in homemade sweet/sour sauce was incredible. The batter retained its light crunch despite being in a sauce. Not sure how they pulled that off. It reminded me of what Chinese Food used to taste like when I was a kid; before the large food distributors got involved and started selling frozen prepared foods to small restaurants like this. We also loved the very friendly service by the inquisitive co-owner. Her enthusiasm for the restaurant and the quality of the food they serve was very evident. Prices were very reasonable too. Interior is very informal and casual (no problem going in your...

The food was decent, but the waitress service was terrible. We went here the other day for a small family birthday party (about 13 people, including two small children). The food serviced tasted pretty good, no complaints there. The waitress appeared very nice, but struggled with getting specific orders (not writing down the first thing I order out of three items and doubling a friend's order that was not supposed to be doubled) and not checking if drinks need to be refilled. These issues were sort of brushed off since we had arrived late and there were a mix of orders. When it came time to pay, orders were not properly arranged based of customer; causing my parents to have to pay for other's food since she had no idea who had what. The worst part of her service, once everything was paid for and we were about to leave, she became very rude stating she had supposedly only recieved a $5 tip out of all of the orders (even though three out of four of the people had in fact tipped) and almost harrassing us/causing another customer to harrass us as we left. The friend that forgot to tip went back in, mentioning they had thought they add an extra $5 to the cash order, which she replied rudely with, "Well you didn't." Again, this person had been the only one out of four who had not tipped.

Nevertheless, never returning to this restaraunt. The food is not good enough to deal with poor...